God is love! So, let us just think about that for a moment.<\/p>\n
Ponder the fact that the very essence of Almighty God, who made everything from nothing; knows everything; and keeps everything that he made in existence; is love. It\u2019s the only thing that makes sense, isn\u2019t it? Why would God make anything except that it pleased him to do so; and why would he maintain it unless he loved it? In fact, once God creates something, his attention is always focused on the welfare of His creation. It\u2019s self sacrificial love.<\/p>\n
Now you might think of some examples to challenge my statement that everything God created is out of love. For, as Ogden Nash so succinctly put it: \u201cGod in his wisdom made the fly and then forgot to tell us why\u201d.<\/p>\n
But you know what?\u201d Anyone who studies the hierarchy of God\u2019s created life forms can tell you exactly where the fly fits in. There is an incredible master design of both the physical world and plants and animals. And all of it behaves according to God\u2019s plan. As it says in the creation story in Genesis over and over again; \u201cAnd God saw that it was good, very good\u201d.<\/p>\n
So, while there are things that happen in nature, so called \u201cacts of God\u201d; and there are interactions between animals and animals, or people and people, which seem to contradict what a loving God would do or allow to happen, that simply isn\u2019t true, just as it isn\u2019t true that flies are all bad.<\/p>\n
Things may seem differently to us sometimes because we don\u2019t have the big picture; \u201cFor who can probe the mind of God\u201d as it says in the Psalms. The problem that we have with God\u2019s \u201clove\u201d is that we really don\u2019t understand love. And in fact, as human beings we will always be incapable of understanding the mind of God, and that includes the depth of his love for us.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure that parents and Grandparents and can appreciate what it must be like for God when they find it necessary to discipline their children. In so many cases their children just can\u2019t understand the wisdom and love in that discipline. But the parents and Grandparents have been there, done that.<\/p>\n
And so, we have to accept on Faith that God is Love and that love is what motivates everything He does. And it is not such a great leap of faith either. Because here we all are- we came into existence out of God\u2019s love; and out of God\u2019s love we were given life, talents, limitations and a free will. God does not interfere with that out of love. He lets us take our \u201cgift of life\u201d and run with it. However life unfolds for us, it is constantly maintained by God within the constraints of the consequences we face for our own choices made by our free will.<\/p>\n
Now, our readings today tell us more about God\u2019s love. First, God loves all of us the same, but manifests that love differently. Wasn\u2019t that the point of the reading from Acts? The Disciples were uniquely gifted by God. After all, they were born as part of the chosen people, the Jews, and they lived with Jesus and were intimately familiar with him. Then, they were witnesses to his resurrected body. They had everything going for them in accepting the Faith. These Jews did not mix with Gentiles. It would have been unthinkable for them, taboo.<\/p>\n
But those hundreds of Gentiles that heard the Gospel Story accepted it on Faith. They were welcomed into the Church and received the gift of the Spirit. Peter recognized that, different though they might be, these Gentiles were ready. They were loved just as much by God, but that love was manifested differently.<\/p>\n
Now since God loves all of us the same Then clearly, if we are made in the image in likeness of God, that means all of us are called to love one another as He loves us. That\u2019s what Jesus tells us in the Gospel and John says in the second reading. God sent Jesus to us to redeem us- the gift of his only begotten son. But Jesus also gave us a roadmap, the Gospel, for how to love as he loved us. It\u2019s called unconditional, sacrificial love, the kind of love where a person, \u201clays down one\u2019s own life for his friends\u201d as Jesus says.
\nYou know what? We are called to do that all the time, aren\u2019t we? Mom\u2019s and Dad\u2019s do it all the time for their children; children do it all the time for their aged parents; men and women in the armed services, police, and fire departments do it all the time for the rest of us. Whatever station in life you have, you are likely called to sacrifice your own interests for others in some way. That\u2019s what Jesus did for all of us. And that\u2019s the kind of love we are called to show for each other.<\/p>\n
But the challenge is that we are called to love everyone, even those pesky folks down the street who we don\u2019t like, just as Peter and his disciples were called to love and accept the Gentiles.<\/p>\n
When you think about God\u2019s love for us, it can be no other way, can it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
6th Sunday of Easter Acts 10:25-26; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15: 9-17 Dc. Larry Brockman God is love! So, let us just think about that for a moment. Ponder the fact that the very essence of Almighty God, who made everything from nothing; knows everything; and keeps everything that he made in existence; is love. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[528,529],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1040,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}